Life Changing Secrets
by toledo girl
Summary: Mary is dating Chester before Jessica has even met him. What they have starts out as something simple between the two, but soon becomes complicated when Mary's parents have different plans for Chester.
1. Mary Gatlin

Chapter 1: Mary Gatlin

The senior walked down the hallways of the high school during her final week there. Her name was Mary Gatlin. Everything was going perfect for her at the moment.

She had her older sister, Jessica, who was right now getting ready to go on trip with her as soon as school got out. Their entire life, they had been extremely close. Even now, there were plenty of bedrooms in the house, but they had still chosen to share a bedroom. Every time one of them had planned a trip, the other one was automatically invited. The only time that they didn't go to a party or something with each other was when Jessica had somehow gotten through high school, she was invited to all the graduation parties.

There was also her brother, who was the oldest of the three, Randolph. He was the one that their parents had immediately given up on. At the age of twenty one, he had already accomplished more insane and pointless tasks than most psychiatric patients had. He was currently working on proving the existence of aliens, which was better than his last failing project, astroprojection, or the ability to have out of body experiences at will. His claim was always, that if he were to perfect whatever he was working, that he would make it big.

The only one that ever got that close to Randolph and pretended to understand him, was Ingrid Svenson, their Swedish maid. She had been working for the Gatlins for about ten years, and the entire time she had stayed distant from most of the family. There was the occasional greeting between her and someone from the family, but it was mostly just casual chit chat. The first one to sit down and talk to her, and to this day, the only one was Randolph. Everyone there could easily see how close the two were. Mary herself had discovered just how close they were when she had walked in on them a few days ago.

Her parents weren't all that normal either. Ever since the war, her father had been having flashbacks, well, that's what she had called them. It was little periods where he had actually thought that he was still in WW1 fighting. Her mother on the other hand, Catherine, was a bit of a socialite. She was a little strict with her children, and for some reason seemed to always favor Jessica over her.

The halls were filled with scattered students as they rushed to get back home. Mary just leaned against the wall and played with her hair as she watched a certain boy cross through the halls. His name was Chester Tate. The two had been sleeping together through the last week and wanted to meet for a ride home and then dinner that night.

The relationship that she had with him made her feel cheap, almost tacky, but there was something about him that allowed her to not care. The way that he would carry books for her, hold the door for her, the money that he had, which he had used to treat her like a princess. There first date, they had enough lust for each other to sleep with each other out behind the old barn that belonged to his cousin where she had met him in secret. The only one that had known anything about the two what so ever, was of course Jessica, but even she wasn't aware of who he was, just that he was awful sweet on her sister.

"Hello," he greeted as he walked over and met her. The smile on his face instantly caused her to melt.

"What time are you going to be done working with your father tonight?" she asked. The sooner the better, she kept thinking.

Chester looked off over to another young lady, Sheila Fine, and then back over at Mary. "I don't know Mary, he's dragging me along to this party for this big investor and apparently it's rude to leave early." He knew it was wrong to lie to her like that, but that's what made everything more fun and exciting to him. He had graduated from high school a few years ago, but when he had met Mary in the store and realized that she wanted to hide the fact that she would be dating an older boy, he was interested. He actually had had the day off, and he was glad that he had been sneaking out earlier to meet her after school, because now he wouldn't have to think of a reason that he would be there. In reality, he was going to be having dinner with Sheila Fine, the girl that he had met a couple days ago while waiting for Mary.

Mary sighed. Her excitement had just been pulled away from her. She had been wanting to talk to Chester about Friday night, and her graduation and then meeting her in Long Island where she and Jessica would be staying. There were a lot of things to discuss before Friday came, and it was already Wednesday.

"How about we stop over real quick for a shake or something?" Chester offered.

Immediately, she had picked up on what the something was that he was after. It was very tempting, but she wanted to talk to him before they had done anything else. "How about we just wait til tomorrow, that way we can actually have a nice dinner and talk?"

"Sure," he said as his face dropped a tiny bit. He knew that he had already had a date with Sheila, but this would have given him an entire night.

Mary smiled to him and then started to walk off. "Oh, Mary, wait!" he called out to her.

"Yes?" she asked as she turned back to him. Figured that he was just going to ask if she was sure or not.

"Your parents, they're going to be allowing my dad to invest money for them. I'm going to be at your house this Saturday night having dinner with you!" He was excited for the occasion, but there was the nervousness that lingered. If at any point in time during the dinner the two let on that they were together, they would be done.

Mary stopped and watched him for a minute. She went and walked back over to him. "Are you going to be able to handle that?" she asked.

Chester shrugged and smirked at her. "You think you can?"

Mary rolled her eyes. "We'll get together before dinner." She figured that they would have enough time to get everything out of their system, or at least find a way to threaten him to behave.

**Just a start, let me know what you think. Please review. **


	2. Planning Ahead

Chapter 2: Planning Ahead

Mary lay there on her bed as she stared up at the ceiling. Jessica sat on her bed across the small room as she listened to her sister recount the things that had happened earlier that day with Chester.

"I wonder if he even still likes me," Mary said and then rolled over to lay on her stomach. "I mean the man barely ever just goes out with me anymore. If anything he spends more time making up excuses as to why he can't stay with me for that long and then tries to find a way to fit in a quickie before he has to go off to some party or get together."

Jessica stared to her for a second as she thought over what she had just heard. Her face was now twisted with confusion. "A quickie?" she asked and then stopped to ponder on it a few more seconds. "A quickie what Mary?"

Mary smiled at her sister's innocence. This was part of the only reason that her and Chester had been kept a secret, the main person that she was telling everything to didn't understand her. "A kiss Jessie," she lied. All their lives, they had both been taught that sex was dirty and filthy, so of course Jessica being the goody two shoes that she was, did not expect this of Mary. She blamed some of her sister's misunderstandings on her mother, but she also wondered if Jessica really all along knew what she was talking about but just played dumb. She had known her sister to play oblivious to things that had upset her.

A look of instant relief came over Jessica's face. "Oh good." She sat forward and smiled. "For a second I thought that you were actually talking about you know what."

"What's that?" Mary asked deciding to join in and play the game.

"Oh you know what I'm talking about. The big unmentionable," Jessica said.

Mary sat up and looked to her with curiosity. "Yeah? What's that?" It was mean of her, but she just wanted to try and get her to say it.

"Come on Mary! The thing that you do when you get married."

"Buy a house?" Mary asked.

"I guess you could call it that. I mean you do do this activity inside your house," Jessica said.

Mary just softly laughed to herself and then leaned back against the headboard. "Do you know the details yet of our trip?" Mary asked trying to change the subject.

Jessica just shrugged. "Was there anyone else that you wanted to bring with us?"

"Maybe I could bring my boyfriend. That way you could get to know him."

Jessica looked to her sister in absolute shock. "Mary!" she gasped. "How could you even suggest that? Staying in the same house with a boy, a single boy without any supervision."

"I think we would have separate rooms Jess," Mary said.

"Well," Jessica responded.

"Besides, if worst comes to worst, he could go get himself a hotel room. He is rich, and when I say rich, I mean rich."

"Really? How rich is that?" Jessica asked.

Mary just laughed. "You'll know when you meet him. But Jess, you're going to be the first to meet him, so keeps things quiet all right?"

Jessica nodded. She knew that their parents could be overbearing when they knew that one of them had a boyfriend, so it was instinct to keep that stuff a secret. If the guy was that important to you, you kept it a secret. On the other hand, her and Mary used that to chase off some guys that they didn't like. They would bring them home and introduce them as their boyfriends and their parents would do the rest. "I promise I won't tell."

"Good," Mary said. "He means a lot to me."

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Mary and Chester lay under the covers of his parent's bed as he had his arm around her. "You know Mary," he started. "I don't think that I could leave you for another girl." He of course was lying, he just wanted to find out how much she really knew about his life.

"Really?" she asked. That was something that she hadn't heard from a boy yet. "I don't think I could leave you either."

Chester smiled. This was the one. She had no clue about him, and that was something he was sure he could keep secret. "You think we should take this a step further then?"

Mary's eyes widened. "What?" she asked as she grabbed the covers over her and sat up. The question was very clear to her.

"I think you know. Become Mrs. Tate?" Chester asked.

Mary sat back and leaned against the headboard. "I don't know. I mean, we just started dating a week ago. I have to really think about it." There was no reasons that she could think of to say no, but there wasn't many that she could think of to say yes either.

"Well Mary, I'll give you some time to think about it. You can let me know after dinner tomorrow night." Chester got up and out of bed.

Mary followed him and they both got dressed. They both knew the schedule well. They had an hour to do what ever they wanted until his parents got home. the thought of marriage though was running through it was the right time to get married. After all, today was her last day of highschool and her graduation was going to be next weekend. Chester did already have a stable life. He was about to get a good job from his father and he already had some money saved.

"Just remember," Mary warned. "Be on your best behavior. The last thing I want is my parents finding out about us. Trust me, they will scare you away."

Chester laughed. "Come on, don't you think I have any self control at all?"

"Not around me, that's for sure," Mary said.

Chester sighed. "Don't worry about it. I don't want my dad to know that I have a girlfriend yet. He would tell me to pay more attention to business than to you and that maybe I should just wait to have a girlfriend, let alone consider getting married."


End file.
